Rail Photo of the Month: November 2019

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La Brugeoise PCC tram 7824

La Brugeoise PCC Tram 7824

Location: Rue Royale at Place des Palais, Brussels, Belgium
Operator of Vehicle: Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company
Date of Photo: November 21, 2013

Six years ago this month, I made my second visit (and first planned visit) to Brussels.  The story of my first visit to Brussels is probably best told in its own post, but the short version is that I had 90 minutes to kill due to a missed connection between the Thalys and ICE trains there in June 2008.  This made my second visit seem like an eternity in comparison, a whole eight hours between flights when traveling from Portugal to Israel.  As a result of having such an extended period of time in which to explore the city, I was able to see more than just the trams that happened to pass through the area by Gare du Midi. Here is one of the photos I took that day, of a PCC tram built by La Brugeoise, a Belgian train manufacturer, in the 1970s.  Although La Brugeoise has since been bought out by Bombardier, these PCC trams continue to serve the Belgian capital today.

If all goes to plan, I will make two additional posts about my visits to Brussels later this month.  

For more photos of trams in Brussels, please click here.

 

Bus Photo of the Month: November 2019

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Gillig Advantage 4019

Gillig Advantage 4019

Location: West Summit Hill Drive, Knoxville, TN
Operator of Vehicle: Knoxville Area Transit (KAT)
Date of Photo: November 28, 2014

My family never had any particularly strong Thanksgiving traditions.  However, Mrs. Oren’s Transit Page comes from a family that has been gathering for a family reunion each Thanksgiving for decades.  There are two significant upsides to this situation.  The first is that there is virtually no discussion about whose family we spend the holiday with, which is a topic that I understand to be a difficult one in some homes.  The second (and the one probably of more interest to the people reading this) is that since the reunion moves from place to place each year, I have had the opportunity to photograph and ride transit in places that I had never been previously (though that streak comes to an end this year as the reunion returns to a “repeat” location since I’ve been invited for the first time).  Within this second upside, there is an upside and a downside.  The upside is that many transit agencies operate a regular, weekday schedule on the Friday after Thanksgiving, which means transit fans such as myself get to enjoy rush hour frequencies on a day with less street traffic, which is a pleasure.  The downside is that service is sometimes limited over the holiday weekend, resulting in situations such as what I experienced when we were in Knoxville for Thanksgiving in 2014.  Knoxville Area Transit doesn’t have a particularly large transit system to begin with, so the holiday schedules coupled with the long headways in that system resulted in my getting a single transit photo during the reunion there.  So in honor of the holiday at the end of this month, for the Bus Photo of the Month for November 2019, I present my lone photo (to date) from Knoxville, TN.  

For more information about Knoxville Area Transit, please click here.

 

Bus Photo of the Month: October 2019

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New Flyer XN60 1104

New Flyer XN60 1104

Location: A Street between India Street and Columbia Street, San Diego, CA
Operator of Vehicle: San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS)
Date of Photo: July 16, 2014

In honor of the second annual “Free Ride Day” in San Diego, which took place yesterday, it seemed appropriate to share a photo from my 2014 trip to San Diego for the Bus Photo of the Month.  MTS uses Free Ride Day as a way to encourage San Diegans to discover how they can use the transit system as part of their regular commutes, the hope being that if people like it enough when it is free that they will become paying passengers.  In the first iteration of Free Ride Day in 2018, over 53,000 trips were taken.  No word yet on what this year’s ridership figure was.

For more photos of MTS buses, please click here.

 

Rail Photo of the Month: October 2019

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2200 Series 2222

2200 Series 2222

Location: Polk Station, Chicago, IL
Operator of Vehicle: Chicago Transit Authority
Date of Photo: July 30, 2007

Yesterday, the Chicago Transit Authority celebrated its anniversary.  On October 1, 1947, the CTA assumed the operations of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company (the ‘L’ system) and the Chicago Surface Lines (the streetcar system).  In recent years, the CTA has marked the occasion with a “Customer Appreciation Day.”  This year’s edition included the first public run of the 6000 Series trains since their retirement on December 4, 1992.  The 6000 Series cars were introduced in 1950 and featured “blinker doors” to facilitate better movement within the cars for ingress and egress.  They were also the first cars in the CTA rail fleet to be married pairs.  

To celebrate its 72nd anniversary, the CTA ran the cars in the Loop during the midday yesterday.  I wasn’t in Chicago, so I don’t have any photos of the event.  (This post could turn in to a lament about how it has been too long since I’ve visited Chicago, but it won’t.)  Instead, I decided it was fitting to share a photo of a 2200 Series Car that featured the same type of blinker doors that the 6000 Series cars featured.  The 2200 Series cars were retired in August 2013, and like the 6000 Series cars, a limited number have been preserved for historical purposes.  

For more photos of the CTA 2200 Series Cars, please click here.

 

Oren’s Reading List: Bringing a Cable Car back to San Francisco After 77 Years

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Last weekend was MUNI’s annual “Heritage Weekend” event, when vintage streetcars, buses, and streetcars are brought out in to revenue service by the Market Street Railway. I’ve never been to San Francisco for this event, but I did see an article floating around about how a San Francisco cable car constructed in 1883 was restored over the course of 20 years.  That restoration was completed just in time for this year’s Heritage Weekend event.  Click here to read the whole story.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Rail Photo of the Month: September 2019

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PA-1 657

PA-1 657

Location: Exchange Place Station, Jersey City, NJ
Operator of Vehicle: Port Authority of New York & New Jersey
Date of Photo: September 4, 2001

Next week, the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks will be commemorated.  One can cite a long list of things that changed in the wake of the terrorist attacks that no one would have expected in the years since.  On the transit side of things, one did not feel a sense of urgency to visit the World Trade Center PATH station on September 4, 2001, just one week before the station would be destroyed when the Twin Towers collapsed.  I certainly did not, which is why I opted to transfer to trains at Exchange Place instead of at World Trade Center while traveling between Newark and Hoboken that day.  As it turned out, I would never have a chance to visit the original World Trade Center station, and it would be the only station on PATH that I did not travel to prior to September 2001.  I have since been to the temporary station that opened in 2003, but not the Santiago Calatrava designed Oculus 

For more photos of PATH, please click here.

 

Bus Photo of the Month: September 2019

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NABI 60-BRT/CNG 5414

NABI 60-BRT/CNG 5414

Location: H Street, NW at 16th Street
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: March 13, 2015

If the transit fan rumor mill is to be believed (a risky proposition at times), your chances to catch a photo such as this one are dwindling.  The NABI 60-BRT/CNG articulated buses that WMATA took delivery of in 2008 are approaching retirement.  A handful have been rehabbed, but others have not, potentially shortening the useful service lives of those units.  These buses have also been seen on the streets of DC less frequently, with some supposing that if it weren’t for the need for extra buses due to the Blue and Yellow Line shutdown in Virginia, they would already be retired.

I’ve been on these buses only once or twice back when they were brand new.  They certainly brought a unique look to the WMATA fleet, being the first NABI BRT buses the agency ordered.  I find the front to be a bit peculiar looking, so these aren’t my favorite buses from an aesthetic standpoint.  However, taking shots of articulated buses as they are coming around curves is one of my favorite photos to go for while transitfanning, no matter the model of articulated bus, and WMATA will be getting more 60 footers to replace the NABIs when it is time to dispatch these buses to the “big bus garage in the sky.”

For more photos of WMATA’s Metrobus 2008 NABI 60BRT/CNG Articulated Buses, please click here.

 

Oren’s Reading List: A Visit to the TTC Control Centre

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TTC T-1 5092
I’ve had the opportunity to visit some areas of transit systems that are typically off limits to the public and have been able to take photographs that you can find on this website.  There are also times that I have had access to non-public parts of a transit system where photography is forbidden or I am asked not to share my photos online, and I abide by those requests out of respect for those who make them.  In 2007, I had the opportunity to visit the TTC Control Centre, the location from which the Toronto Transit Commission keeps the largest transit system in Canada and the third largest transit system in North America running smoothly.  On my visit, photography was not permitted.  The National Post obtained access and permission to photograph and write about what goes on in the control centre, also referred to as the TTC’s war room.  This is a scene that plays out behind the scenes of every transit agency as it attempts to keep trains and their passengers moving while constantly handling unexpected circumstances such as malfunctioning doors and emergency alarms.  And while you may not believe it, it might be a “net positive” to offload your train in the midst of a transit delay in order to keep everyone else moving.

Curious to have a glimpse behind the scenes at the TTC’s control centre?  Click here to read the National Post’s article.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Bus Photo of the Month: August 2019

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Neoplan AN440 8125

Neoplan AN440 8125

Location: Golden Gate Bridge Parking Lot, San Francisco, CA
Operator of Vehicle: San Francisco Municipal Railway (MUNI)
Date of Photo: July 25, 2014

In yesterday’s post, you may have noticed that I wrote that I was not in the DC area for the WMATA Silver Line opening.  If you were wondering where I was instead, here is your answer!  In 2014, I spent a few weeks crisscrossing the country, mostly by train.  After the woman now known as Mrs. Oren’s Transit Page and I rode the California Zephyr together from Denver to Emeryville, we spent the weekend in the Bay Area.  Believe it or not, we actually didn’t use any public transit during our travels between where we stayed in Oakland and the other places we visited over the course of the weekend, and I only managed one photo of San Francisco area transit during our time there.  This is that picture, taken at the San Francisco end of the Golden Gate Bridge.  

I’ve enjoyed San Francisco each time I’ve been there and expect to visit again at some point in the future.  Anyone want to place a bet that I’ll take more than one transit photo on my next trip?

For more photos of MUNI Bus Operations, please click here.

 

Rail Photo of the Month: August 2019

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CAF 5139

CAF 5139

Location: Tysons Corner Station, Tysons Corner, VA
Operator of Vehicle: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA)
Date of Photo: January 20, 2015

A post by a friend on Facebook this week reminded me that the WMATA Silver Line is now five years old.  After years and years of waiting to see if the funding would even come through to extend Metro to Tysons and/or beyond, the line finally opened on July 26, 2014.  I did not get a chance to check out the new segment of railroad for nearly six months, but once I did, I took plenty of photos, just as you would expect.  This is one of my favorites from that outing, a photo of a 5000 Series train leaving Tysons Corner just after sunset.  In addition to the train itself, I was able to capture the station architecture (a style first used at the Silver Line Phase I stations) and part of the Tysons skyline in this one shot.  

Which do you find harder to believe?  That there is Metrorail service to Tysons Corner or that it has been operating for five years?

For more photos of WMATA’s 5000 Series cars, please click here.